John Dartigue

John Dartigue, coauthor of "Forging Ahead: Recollections of the Life and Times of Esther Dartigue," was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He earned his B.A. in English and American literature at Brandeis and his M.A. in politics at Columbia. After a short stint at the UN, he spent 36 years in the movie industry in the field of publicity, first at United Artists in New York and then at Warner Bros. in California. He retired in 2001 and lives in Los Angeles. This is his first book. His coauthor and mother, Esther Dartigue, was born in Vizakna, in the Transylvanian Alps of Hungary, and passed away in 2003. Living a life far different from that of most American women, she left behind an account of her first 40 years and a calendar of her last 40, which formed the basis for this book, her third. (The previous two were about my father, "An Outstanding Haitian, Maurice Dartigue" [1994] and "Un Haïtien exceptionnel Maurice Dartigue" [1992]). Growing up poor and one of the objects of her father's beatings, she left home at age 11 and hired herself out as a domestic so she could complete high school. She then earned a B.A. in literature and education at Wooster College in Ohio and an M.A. in rural education at Teachers College (Columbia University), where she met my father. She spent the next 15 years in Haiti, where she was founder/director of an American-style pre-school and kindergarten and later served as director of a highly successful leisure club for charity. This was followed by 10 years in New York as a college teacher and nursery-school director, and then by nearly 50 years in Paris, where she was Director of the UN Nursery School and became a spokesperson for and specialist in early childhood education. She is also the author of seven education magazine articles on bilingualism in an international pre-school setting.